Sony revamped its exercise-friendly Walkman W series Thursday with a new W260 version. Its update is two thirds smaller than the outgoing W250 and also weighs a quarter less, the combination of which makes their all-in-one, over-ear design more comfortable for a long run. They remain water-resistant and have a quick charge that will get them up to an hour of playback in three minutes.
The new version has a full battery life of eight hours. It focuses on drag-and-drop to load music but has a Content Transfer app for Windows users to speed along the process; Macs should also have basic file system support. Along with MP3s, it should recognize both protected and unprotected WMA files, though Windows Media Player is needed to shuffle over the locked content.
Both 2GB and 4GB capacities will be available in August. A 2GB version will cost $60 and will come in either black or white, while the 4GB edition should be black-only and will fetch $80.
